CHINA
PORCELAIN® DECORATED
of pottery and stone-ware, with monochromatic or polychromatic glazes.
Note must also be taken of Chinese porcelains decorated in Europe. About the year 1700, the Dutch keramists discovered the method of preparing some of the colours used for painting over the glaze. To employ these colours for decorating faience, such as that manufactured at Delft, would have been diffi- cult, if not impossible. Accordingly the first essays were made with porcelains imported from China, offering a greater or less expanse of white surface for the exercise of the enameller’s art. About the same epoch the péte-tendre ware of Sévres and the hard porcelain of Bottger making their appearance, these also began to be decorated with Delft enamels after Chinese fashions. Such essays were speedily followed by similar imitations from the factories in Italy, Saxony, Austria, and England. It then occurred to the merchants who had hitherto included Chinese decorated porcelains among their articles of trade, that a profit might also be realized by importing white porcelains for ornamentation at the hands of Delft experts. M. du Sartel, in his ‘ Porcelaine de Chine,” says that a regular business of this nature sprang up in 1705. The well-known keramist, Gerrit von der Kaade, and his confréres at Delft pur- chased quantities of Chinese undecorated porcelain, and adorned it with pictures sometimes of purely European genre, sometimes of Chinese type. The industry lasted until 1740, and during this interval of thirty-five years many specimens were produced, excellent alike in technique and artistic conception. Their enamels lacked the brilliancy of the “ Famille Verte,’ and the continued solidity and delicacy of the
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